Fact-Checking #ShETHER: The Truth Behind Remy’s Punch Lines

A detailed breakdown of Remy Ma's 'ShETHER' bars.

It was mid-day on a particularly uneventful Saturday, when a White Barbie doll, bloodied and dismembered appeared on my timeline. My heart and mind began to race like a girlfriend who had just unlocked her man’s iPhone. Was the photo a blatant stab wound to the cover of Pink Friday, or another photo-shopped attempt by the Internet to add catalyst to the brewing beef between rap’s top women?

As a fan of both Nicki Minaj and Remy Ma, and someone invested in hip-hop, I skipped the middle man and went directly to the source. And there it lies, like the dead body in Boyz In The Hood that Remy referenced in the caption. ShETHER. Link in bio.

Days before Remy emptied her clip (sans a bullet or two she may have saved for later) into the the Barb, the Queens femcee declared she wasn’t taking subliminal shots at Nicki Minaj in her vicious rap verses and made it clear that if she had beef with the Barb, “I will say your name… I’m going to say your government. I’m going to look it up. I’m going to say your mother’s name, your father’s name, your kid’s name. I want you to know that I’m talking about you.”

Nicki, however, continued to throw not-so-subtle jabs at Remy, but it was her verses on Jason Derulo’s Swalla and Gucci Mane’s Make Love which proved to be the final straw.

“Oh oh, you the queen of this here?” Nicki raps on Make Love. “One platinum plaque, album flopped—bitch, where?”

“I gave these bitches two years, now your time’s up,” she raps on Swalla. “Bless her heart, she throwing shots, but every line sucks.”

Nicki and Remy’s beef, on the surface, appears recent, but this shit goes way back, as evidenced by the ferocity of ShETHER. Remy attacks not only public knowledge, like her brother Jehlani’s open legal case, but references personal encounters.

So let’s fact-check Remy’s punchlines. *Pun intended*

“Are You Forgetting That I Pressed You Before B*tch?”

Nicki Minaj rose to fame spitting bars on the streets of NYC. In 2006, she released the mixtape Playtime Is Over with a freestyle commonly referred to as Dirty Money, on which she raps over the Terror Squad Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,

“Tell that bitch with the crown to run it like Chris Brown/ She won three rounds, I’mma need a hundred thou’…/Oh, y’all ain’t know? Bet y’all bitches know now.”

Relevance? Remy Ma was the underground queen of New York after winning an intense heated freestyle battle against Lady Luck. The bout went three rounds with Remy coming out $20,000 richer. Hence Nicki’s line about needing a ‘hundred thou.’

The diss didn’t go unnoticed and Remy pressed Nicki at her mixtape release party. “When I seen her at her party, I was like, ‘Yeah, what was that line about?’”

Facts.

‘How You Take My ’09 Jail tweet And Run?”

Remy Ma claims Nicki Minaj stole her tweet and turned it into one of her most notable lyrics, “All these b*tches is my sons and Imma go and get some bibs for em.” A Twitter user apparently (I say that cautiously as people have become quite crafty at photo-shopping tweets) dug up the 09 tweet, which proves Remy did in fact use the reference before Nicki dropped Did It On ‘Em in 2011.

‘Left Your Day 1 ‘Cause You Heard He Was On Some Cheat Shit/Then Got With The Dude That Told You On Some Creep Shit’

Source: Steven Lawton / Getty

Rumor has it, Nicki Minaj broke up with Safaree because he allegedly cheated on her, then got with meek Mill, who told her about the affair. How did Meek know about it? He was allegedly there when it all went down. As the story goes, Meek told Nicki then Nicki got with Meek.

This remains unconfirmed as both parties have their respective reasons for their breakup.

Unsolved.

‘You A Internet Troll, A Web Browser, I’m Sorry/You Can’t Get A Online Without Safaree’

Since Nicki and Safaree’s separated, hip-hop critics have openly expressed their feelings about her music post-breakup and it isn’t necessarily favorable, which Remy